Provision is generally made to adjust the poundage of a compound archery bow. This allows the archer to tailor the bow to his particular physical capabilities and the use to which he is putting the bow.
Typically, a screw-type adjuster is employed for this purpose. This approach is disadvantageous in that the person has to keep in mind or guess at the number of turns or other displacement of the adjuster; and this is an unwanted complication, particularly if the adjustment is being made in the field. Also, the prior art poundage adjusters typically alter the geometry of the bow as the poundage adjustment is made by changing the brace height of the bow. Geometrical alterations can significantly, and adversely, affect the performance of the bow.
Prior art bows with screw-type poundage adjusters are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. No. 4,178,905 to Groner; U.S. Pat. No. 5,464,001 to Peck; U.S. Pat. No. 5,720,267 to Walk; U.S. Pat. No. 6,024,076 to Laborde, et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,244,259 to Adkins.
Hsu U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,388,563 and 5,411,008 disclose poundage adjusters which feature an indexing arrangement for facilitating poundage adjustment. However, these mechanisms are specifically designed for recurve bows; and there is nothing even remotely suggesting how they could be used or adapted for compound bow poundage adjustment. At the least, this adaptation would require extensive experimentation and redesign. Furthermore, the Hsu approach requires a locking nut and an Allen wrench for tightening and loosening the nut. This is an unwanted complication because of the additional parts required and one which is not considered suitable for field use because of the ease with which the Allen wrench might be lost or misplaced.
A hybrid compound bow has cam-anchored control and buss cables which time and otherwise control the rotation of the bow's upper and lower cams. In a conventional bow, these cables place unbalanced loads on the cam(s). This causes the bottom cam to lean and wobble as the bow is drawn and as an arrow is subsequently shot from the bow. Such phenomena produce significant and unwanted noise and vibration and a significant and obviously unwanted decrease in the accuracy of the bow. A patent addressing these problems is U.S. Pat. No. 6,659,096 to Nealy, Sr., et al. However, the patented approach is believed to be unnecessarily complicated; and it is designed for use only in single cam bows.